Hotel Laguna by Nicola Harrison

 During World War II, Hazel Francis from Wichita, Kansas, heads to California to find a job that would contribute to the war effort in Nicola Harrison’s latest historical fiction Hotel Laguna due out June 20. Hazel becomes one of the “Rosie the Riveters” at Douglas Aircraft until the end of the war brings the end of her job with men returning to their places constructing airplanes. Sad because she really enjoyed her job, she hopes that some day she will once again be working on airplanes, perhaps maybe learning to fly them.

Hazel stays behind in California, winding up in the small town of Laguna Beach, home to an art crowd. She becomes an assistant to the famous artist Hanson Radcliff, a job that can mean anything from posing nude to running errands to working in a gallery he supports. Cantankerous Radcliff is beloved by the town because of his contributions to the art scene even though he lives with the anguish of a disgrace that occurred earlier in his life.

While her boss gives her constant grief, the community embraces Hazel who represents Radcliff at community meetings, finding herself becoming a key player in Laguna Beach’s Pageant of the Masters, an actual event in which “classical and contemporary works of art are transformed by real people through costumes, makeup, headdresses, lighting, props, and backgrounds.” The annual pageant was started in 1933 interrupted only by World War II and the Covid pandemic.

As Hazel becomes more involved with the artist and the mysterious incident that keeps him home except for regular visits to the bar at Hotel Laguna, she turns to the library to find articles from 35 years ago that might shed more light on the scandal that has crippled him emotionally and driven him to drink . She learns that Radcliff had been the personal artist for fictional actress Isabella Rose, and when she died under mysterious circumstances, he and his shocking portrait of Isabella disappeared.

Was it possible that Radcliff had something to do with his benefactor’s death? Where was the famous painting that no one had seen since 1910? What can Hazel do to help her employer find peace in his declining years?

Nicola Harrison’s first book of historical fiction, Montauk, in 2019 was inspired by the many summers she visited there, and I found it to be a beautiful debut novel. A Hampshire, England, native, Harrison moved to California as a teenager and studied literature at UCLA. After spending 17 years in NYC in the magazine publishing field, she returned to California where she settled with her family.